September 14, 2013

Several years ago, I wrote an essay entitled General Convention and Its Aftermath: Non-theological Interpretations and a Theological Alternative, which was published in The Trinity Journal For Theology and Ministry, fall 2008. In this essay, I looked at the explanations that were being offered for the theological crisis that overtook the Episcopal Church after General Convention 2003, and argued that the dominant evaluations were based on pragmatic or secular political considerations, and that the issue needed to be addressed in a properly theological manner instead. The three primary non-theological arguments (1) echoed the political rhetoric of the culture wars, (2) argued against a so-called “Fundamentalist” takeover of the Church, (3) and argued for diversity over against exclusivity. In each case, the evaluation leaned more on emotional rhetoric rather than careful argument, and, in no case were properly theological concerns addressed. I argued that the real crisis in the Episcopal Church was a loss of theological integrity, that the the ordination of a practicing gay bishop was symptomatic of a loss of faith in the key doctrinal subject matter of Christian faith, and that the real dividing issue was not about sexuality but about Christology and the meaning of salvation.

Concerning women’s ordination, I find an uncomfortable parallel between the kinds of arguments used by advocates of the new “inclusivist” theology in the Episcopal and other mainline churches, and many of the arguments used by opponents of women’s ordination; in both cases, many of the arguments are not properly theological. Many of the arguments used by opponents of women’s ordination are reverse mirror images of the kinds of arguments that were used by advocates for the ordination of a gay bishop a decade ago.

In what follows, I want to address some of these non-theological arguments against women’s ordination. The following sections in italics are my summary of actual non-theological arguments against women’s ordination that I have encountered. They are used frequently enough as to be considered “standard” arguments.

The practice of ordaining women was introduced into the church by liberal theologians. The ordination of women is part of a radical secularist egalitarian agenda, and those in favor of women’s ordination share these same secularist assumptions. So-called “orthodox” advocates for women’s ordination “stand on the shoulders” of these radical liberals, and ultimately share the same questionable egalitarian assumptions.

There is also an inherent connection between the ordination of women and the ordination of practicing homosexuals. Both are based on the same individualist assumptions, both use the same egalitarian arguments, and embracing one cause inevitably and logically leads to the other. So there should be no surprise that the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church was followed shortly by the ordinaion of a gay bishop.

A quick glance at the above arguments reveals a kind of “funhouse mirror” reverse logic to the liberal arguments I referred to in my earlier essay. If advocates of “inclusivism” argued that their opponents are part of a “right wing” conspiracy, opponents of women’s ordination argue that advocates are part of a “liberal secularist” conspiracy. If advocates of “inclusivism” argued that their opponents are part of a “fundamentalist takeover” of the church, opponents of women’s ordination argue that advocates of women’s ordination are part of a “liberal takeover” of the church. If advocates of “inclusivism” argued in favor of “diversity” against the “exclusivism” of their opponents, opponents of women’s ordination argue for “hierarchy” or different gender “roles” in contrast to the “egalitarianism” of their opponents. In each case, the arguments rather cancel each other out. How does one assess whether a “right-wing conspiracy” is worse than a “liberal” one, or vice versa, whether the real “takeover” is on the part of fundamentalists or liberals, whether inclusiveness and diversity are better than exclusiveness, or, rather, whether, traditional gender roles are better than egalitarianism?

Several of the above arguments are also logically fallacious. Even if true, the argument that women’s ordination was originally advocated by liberal Protestants is a post hoc, proper hoc fallacy. It does not follow that, because many of the advocates of women’s ordination in the 1970’s were theological liberals, that there is an inherent connection between advocacy of women’s ordination and liberal theology. Many who argued for civil rights for racial minorities just preceding the period that women’s ordination first became an issue were also theological liberals, but it does not therefore follow that to be in favor of civil liberties for racial minorities is to stand on the shoulders of liberals, or that to be in favor of civil rights for racial minorities will inevitably lead to liberal theology. As the old saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. While not right about everything, liberals may well have gotten some things right. Presumably, liberals who marched for voting rights and racial equality in the 1960’s were right about that, and we would not want to go back to the days of racial segregation or the time when African-Americans had to use separate drinking fountains and ride in the back of buses simply because some of the advocates of civil rights (such as William Sloan Coffin) were theological liberals.

Moreover, the argument can also be turned on its head. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in response to a letter written by eight white Birmingham clergy (including two Episcopal bishops) calling for a cessation of civil rights demonstrations being led by “outsiders.” King’s letter is considered a theological classic, making the case for the political implications of Christian faith. Presumably, these clergy who opposed King were “orthodox” in their theology. Would one want to draw the connection that there is an inherent connection between “orthodox” theology and opposition to civil liberties? Granted that there is a chronological proximity between the time in which liberal theology came to ascendancy in the Episcopal Church and the approval of women’s ordination in the Episcopal Church, it does not follow that the connection between the two is either straightforward or that there is a clear theological connection between women’s ordination and liberal theology – any more than the resistance to the civil rights movement and racial equality by some “orthodox” Christians in the 1960’s implies a logical correlation between Christian orthodoxy and opposition to racial equality.

Nor does it follow that the connection is a common commitment to a secular agenda of egalitarianism. Drawing such a simplistic connection shows a rather short-sided view of history. I would suggest that there is a connection between the ordination of women and a social movement for liberty and equality, but its roots lie further back, much further back. The first advocates of the ordination of women made their case not in the 1960’s, but a century earlier, immediately after the American Civil War. It is not a coincidence that the case for women’s ordination was first made right after the emancipation of African slaves and that the first advocates of women’s ordination had also been abolitionists. It is also not a coincidence that many of the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement were Christian women, and that women’s suffrage followed in the aftermath of the liberation of the slaves. It is also not a coincidence that the modern case for women’s ordination appeared immediately after the modern civil rights movement. They are connected, but the connection is not secularist, but specifically Christian. (Donald Dayton’s Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (1976, Baker Academic, 2011) is a good introduction to some of the historical connections.).

In the introductory Christian ethics course I teach, I have my students read a number of documents tracing the rise of Christian social ethics. The first is Martin Luther’s “Against the Murdering, Thieving Hordes of Peasants.” Among Luther’s contributions to theology was his notion of secular vocation, that a secular calling to be a magistrate or merchant was just as much a divine calling as the vocation to ordained ministry. Luther’s notion of Christian liberty was an equally significant theological contribution. Luther was appalled, however, when those involved in the Peasants’ Revolt appealed to his ideas to argue for social implications of equality and social and economic freedom. Against the peasants, Luther insisted that the freedom of a Christian was a spiritual matter, and had nothing to do with political or social liberty.

In the next few centuries, however, theologians embraced the social implications of Christian liberty that Luther refused. John Wesley made the argument in his “Thoughts on Slavery” that Christian freedom includes not only spiritual freedom, but freedom in one’s person, and thus slavery is incompatible with Christian faith. Wiliam Wilberforce was the Evangelical Anglican member of Parliament who led the campaign to abolish the British slave trade, and John Newton’s hymn “Amazing Grace” was written by a former slave trader who, after his conversion, eventually became an abolitionist. The abolitionist movement in the United States was also led by Christians, both whites and blacks who were former slaves.

After slavery, Christian thinkers addressed the question of workers’ rights. The Roman Catholic social encyclicals Rerum Novarum, Quadragissimo Anno, Pacem in Terris, as well as Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes argued that the Christian gospel provides salvation not only to individual Christians, but also renews and advances culture, and promotes liberty and equality among all peoples. (There are significant parallels to the social teaching of the Catholic social encyclicals in other Christian movements of the time. Among Anglicans, the so-called “Christian Socialism” movement, associated with figures such as F.D. Maurice, B.F. Westcott, and, later, Charles Gore, is a parallel.)

Although the focus of the earlier encyclicals was on the rights of workers (in opposition to the errors of both socialism and capitalism), Gaudium et Spes went beyond this to speak of issues of war and peace, the arts, and the Christian family. Significantly, Gaudium et Spes made a significant advance over previous Roman Catholic teaching by speaking of the equality of women in the same context in which it spoke of the equality of workers: “Where they have not yet won it, women claim for themselves an equity with men before the law and in fact.” Gaudium et Spes consistently writes of both men and women rather than simply men, and states: “Women now work in almost all spheres. It is fitting that they are able to assume their proper role in accordance with their own nature. It will belong to all to acknowledge and favor the proper and necessary participation of women in the cultural life.” This is a significant shift from earlier Catholic teaching.

Given the significance of the Civil Rights movement of the following years in the United States, and of the later anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, it is perhaps surprising that Gaudium et Spes says little about race. Significantly, it does prohibit discrimination either on the basis of race or of sex: “Nevertheless, with respect to the fundamental rights of the person, every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God’s intent.” Given the little attention that Gaudium et Spes gives to racism, MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was timely.

In the light of these advances beyond the limitations of Luther’s understanding of Christian liberty, it is evident that in the last several hundred years Christians have come to recognize that the notions of Christian liberty and equality have implications not only for salvation, but also for social liberty as well, including freedom in one’s person, freedom in the work place, racial equality, and, finally, equality between the sexes. It is this notion of Christian freedom and equality that is the impetus for a properly orthodox case for women’s ordination, and not a secularist notion of egalitarianism.

Granted, for every advance in understanding of Christian liberty and equality, there have been secular counterparts. The counterpart to the anti-slavery movement and the social concerns of Evangelicals in the nineteenth century was the secularist French Revolution. The counterpart to concerns about the rights of workers expressed by Christian socialists and Catholic social encyclicals were the Communist Manifesto and Marxist communism. The counterpart to Martin Luther King, Jr’s non-violent marches were the Black Panthers and the SDS with their calls for political revolution. And the counterpart to orthodox Christian calls for the ordination of women is no doubt secular feminism. And, just as Luther was opposed to the demands of the peasants, so there have been orthodox Christians who opposed all of the above movements. Neither secular parallels nor opposition by some Christians invalidates the legitimacy of the gradual recognition by Christians of the last several hundreds of years of the implications of Christian liberty and equality, including the ordination of women.

Is there, then, an inherent connection between the ordination of women, the ordination of practicing homosexuals and the collapse of orthodoxy in the Episcopal (and other mainline) churches? There is a connection in the sense that those liberal Protestants who have embraced both women’s ordination and gay liberation, view both as a further implication of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, and that these same people have succeeded in taking over the leadership of the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations. However, as I have argued elsewhere, liberal Protestantism is not a new movement. It existed well before the issue of women’s ordination. For example, Karl Barth and the Confessing Church resisted a largely liberal Protestant German Christian Church that endorsed Nazism, but which certainly did not embrace the ordination of women. (And, no, this is not an example of Godwin’s Law. I am not saying that either contemporary liberal Protestants or opponents of women’s ordination are Nazis.) In Anglican circles, Bishop Charles Gore’s The New Theology and the Old Religion addressed concerns about the rise of liberal Protestanism in the Church of England as long ago as 1907. And neither Gore nor the liberal Protestants whom he criticized were advocating the ordination of women in 1907.

Just as orthodox Christians can agree with liberal Protestants in embracing racial equality while disagreeing with liberal Protestants about endorsing same-sex unions, so they can endorse women’s ordination without endorsing same-sex unions. And they can endorse the ordination of women while remaining orthodox Christians, indeed, not in spite of their orthodox faith, but because of it. (As I mentioned in my first post in this series, it is significant that many of the most prominent orthodox Christian critics of same-sex sexuality have also been advocates of women’s ordination: Richard Hays, Ben Witherington, N.T. Wright, Robert Gagnon, etc.)

But the practice of ordaining women was the beginning of the collapse of orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church (or other mainline churches). A key question is whether women’s ordination has caused more harm than good to the church. Even a cursory examination shows that the consequence of women’s ordination in the Episcopal Church (or elsewhere) has been a disaster. Wherever women have been ordained, theological compromise has followed.

The above observation is a misleading one. Certainly the ordination of women with liberal Protestant convictions in the Episcopal Church (and elsewhere) has been one of the major factors in the collapse of orthodoxy in the mainline churches, especially since many of these women have been advocates of a revisionist feminist theology. (I have examined this theology in a number of places on my blog.) The problem here, however, is not the sex of the people holding the theology, but the theology itself. There have been numerous male theologians who have embraced the same liberal Protestant theology, and their theology would be dubious even if it had not a single ordained woman advocate. The question should rather be addressed on a case by case basis. One could equally ask, has the admission of men to clerical status been a blessing or curse to the Christian community? Which men under which circumstances, at which period in history? Athanasius? Arius? Cyril? Nestorius? Innocent III? Luther? Wolsey? Cranmer? Calvin? Laud? Bonhoeffer? The bishops of the Deutsche Christe? Michael Ramsey? Rowan Williams? Karl Barth? Rudolf Bultmann? John Spong? N.T. Wright? All were/are male. All were/are ordained.

A more helpful question would be: Has the ordination of women of orthodox theological convictions been (on the whole) a blessing or curse for the church? By women with orthodox theological convictions, I mean women such as the women who teach at or are students at the seminary where I teach, or the ordained African women who come there to study, who gladly embrace every article of the creed, and affirm without hesitation the authority, sufficiency, and primacy of Scripture, but who differ on the particular question of women’s ordination. Equating such women with Kathrine Jefferts Schori or Mary Glasspool is as unfair as equating N.T. Wright with Jack Spong.

But no one has a “right” to be ordained. Those who advocate women’s ordination are appealing to a language of individual “rights” that is incompatible with Christian orthodoxy.

The question of a “right” to ordination is a fallacy of ambiguity. Certainly, no individual as an individual has a “right” to ordination. However, this applies to men as well as to women. The proper theological question has to do with whether the church should refuse ordination to a particular group of human beings as a class simply because they belong to that class. Arguments must be made as to whether women as a class cannot be properly ordained. Whether such arguments are valid is the crucial issue. Pointing out that no individual as an individual has a right to be ordained is a red herring.

The argument in favor of ordaining women is the same argument as the argument for ordaining men.

Premise: Some human beings should be ordained.
Minor premise: Women are human beings.
Conclusion: Therefore some women should be ordained.

To the contrary, argue the opponents of women’s ordination, that is the wrong major premise. The argument should rather be:

Counter premise: Some male human beings should be ordained.
Minor premise: Women are not males.
Conclusion: Therefore no woman should be ordained.

However, although Scripture speaks of the ordination of males to the presbyterate, it is not self-evident in the passages where it does so whether those males are ordained in virtue of their maleness or in virtue of their humanity. The initial plausibility is that they are ordained because of their humanity since the kinds of things that they are required to do are the kinds of things that human beings in general are capable of doing, for example, preaching, teaching, leading others, or, (although not mentioned in Scripture), administering the sacraments. If an argument is to be made against the ordination of women, it needs to be an actual argument that makes the case that only male human beings can be ordained by virtue of something specifically significant to their being male, and that excludes women from being ordained by virtue of something specifically significant to their being female. (And it cannot be an argument such as “because women are to be subordinate to men” or “women are incapable of administering the sacraments” unless the argument also makes it clear what it is about the nature of women as women that makes these exceptions necessary. Otherwise, once again, the argument is circular.) The burden of proof is thus on those who oppose women’s ordination.

It is indeed the case that no individual has a right to be ordained, but the question to be addressed is not about individuals but about a class of human beings. No individual male human being has the right to be ordained, but the advocates of male-only ordination certainly believe that males as a class have a “right” to be ordained in a way that women as a class do not. Should the church discriminate against a particular class of human beings as a class when it comes to ordination?

But the church discriminates against all kinds of classes of human beings when it comes to ordination. Unbelievers cannot be ordained; heretics cannot be ordained; the mentally defective or the insane cannot be ordained. Practising homosexuals cannot be ordained. Children cannot be ordained. That women as a class cannot be ordained is no more problematic than that these classes cannot be ordained.

To the contrary, none of these are cases of discrimination against a class of human beings simply because they belong to that particular class. In each case, the barrier to ordination is not against a class simply as a class, but against a defect in an individual that specifically prevents that individual from properly exercising the duties of ordination. These defects can be corrected, in which case the particular individual can be ordained. An unbeliever can become a Christian, in which case he can be ordained. A heretic can repent, and be ordained. If the mentally defective or the insane were restored to full mental capacity or functional mental health, they could be ordained. Children cannot be ordained because they are not of sufficient maturity to exercise adult responsibility, but once they become adults, they can be ordained. The prohibition against ordaining homosexuals is not a prohibition against a class, but against a behavior. The church does not ordain those who engage in same-sex sexual activity for the same reason that it does not ordain adulterers, or single people who are not chaste, but a person of same-sex sexual orientation who is celibate or who is married to and exclusively faithful to a person of the opposite sex can be ordained. This refusal is not a discrimination against a class of human beings, but against a behavior that is deemed to be incompatible with Christian discipleship.

To the best of my knowledge, the prohibition against the ordination of women is the only case in which the church discriminates against a particular class of people solely because they belong to that class. Women are not discriminated against because of an incapacity. Women can preach. They can provide pastoral leadership. There is nothing either in an incapacity to inform intentions or inherent physical limitations that would prevent them from celebrating the sacraments. The presumption against women’s ordination is not then based on a moral disqualification or physical impairment. It is a discrimination against women as a class simply because they belong to the class.

Any argument against women’s ordination needs then to be a properly theological argument, and it needs to make the case that there is something in the very nature of women as a class that makes it inappropriate or inherently impossible to exercise ordained ministry.

Attempts at such theological arguments against women’s ordination will be addressed in later posts.

I do intend to address the biblical arguments, which would fall under the category of properly theological objections. However,I thought I should address non-theological arguments first. I do encounter these regularly.

I don’t know that I will address every church father who ever lived, but I do intend to address the rationale (whether theological or not) provided by the tradition as a whole. If there are specific sources I need to address, please direct me.

Thank you for your very thorough discussion of these non-theological arguments. I found it very helpful to distinguish them this way (non-theological vs. theological)! It is very frustrating to always be accused of being on a “slippery slope” to liberalism for believing in the full inclusion of women in the church. Instead of being on a slippery slope, I perceive fundamentalists and the SBC are pushing people off the slope by not making room for women. Then there is no place for gifted women to go but the more “liberal” mainline denominations. Appreciate your advocacy for women’s ordination!

I enjoyed reading your article, but I feel you are wrong to consider women a “class.” Men and women are two parts of what was once an original whole, and each has a specific role in the economy of humanity and its relationship with God.

Women are not a class in an economic sense (proletarian, bourgeoisie, nor are the a distinct racial grouping.

P.S. Please excuse the typos in my previous posting. I wanted to mention that as an Orthodox Christian (Church of Serbia) the whole idea of debating such things as women’s ordination, gay marriage, etc., appears non-nonsensical. We simply can’t understand why what the Church has taught for 2000 years needs to be questioned in the first place.

The term “class” can be used in more than one sense. It can mean “the system of ordering a society in which people are divided into sets based on perceived social or economic status.” This is a sort of sociological definition, and, arguably one could make a case that, while women are not a specific economic class such as proletarian or bourgeousie nor a racial grouping, sociologically they have in all cultures until the modern period played certain social and economic roles based on basic biology. Since only women can give birth and only women can breast-feed, in every culture until the industrial revolution women necessarily have done work that kept them near children. I discuss this in my post on “Women’s Ordination: Beginning with Genesis”:

However, more broadly speaking, a class is a set or category of things having some property or attribute in common and differentiated from others by kind, type, or quality. In this sense women are certainly a class. That is, they are a certain kind of human being (female) that has all the characteristics that are shared in common with all human beings, but distinguished from another kind of human being (male) by certain characteristics or qualities. Unless one embraces something like Plato’s myth in the Symposium that the human being was originally an androgyne that was split in half, one presumably assumes that the distinction between male and female is something basic to being human. My reading of Genesis 1 and 2 indicates that it was God’s original intention in creation for human beings to exist in two basic different ways. It is certainly the case that men and women have certain roles in the economy of humanity. Only men can be husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers. Only women can be wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters. The question concerning women’s ordination has to do with whether there is some characteristic specific to either ordination or sexual differentiation that makes it impossible for female human beings to exercise that role simply because they are female in the same way that the role of mother is only possible to female human beings because only women can give birth.

I think you meant that you (as an Orthodox Christian) find debating women’s ordination to be “nonsensical,” not “non-nonsensical.” (I certainly agree with your statement as it stands. Women’s ordination is not nonsensical. An argument can be made that it makes sense, and I am attempting to do so in these essays.)

I would point you to Orthodox Metropolitan Kallistos Ware who states that the Orthodox have not yet addressed this question theologically. Bishop Kallistos notes that there is a distinction between the fact that the Orthodox have not ordained women and the theological reasons for not ordaining women. He suggests that “it is not very clear theologically why it is impossible for a woman to be a priest.” Ware says that the Orthodox have “not yet thought profoundly about this matter,” and that “the Orthodox literature on this subject is very superficial.” Accordingly, he says, the Orthodox should be “more humble,” not use words like “impossible” or “absurd,” and “think and pray more deeply about it.”

I would welcome such a humble discussion by Orthodox thinkers on this subject. I admit that I have seen very little, and what I have seen has largely echoed the Western (primarily Roman Catholic) arguments.

William, you wrote: “To the best of my knowledge, the prohibition against the ordination of women is the only case in which the church discriminates against a particular class of people solely because they belong to that class.”

- What about OT’s Levitical priesthood? It’s not the church that discriminates in this case, but the Bible speaks of this as of God’s commandment. Another example – “discrimination” of Israel as God’s choosen people agains other nations… Perhaps, the part of answer is that now all christians are priest belong to God’s choosen people, but nevertheless if this kind of “discrimination” was possible before Christ, why can’t it in some other ways be possible now – at least, in theory?

P.S. Waiting for your dealing with the Catholic argument about priest serving in persona Christi.

I think the starting point for the answer to your question wold have to do with the difference between the “church” (my word) and the theology of election in the OT (your word). Election in the OT is not a matter of discrimination, but the election of a particular group of people (the descendants of Abraham) through whom the entire world would eventually be blessed. The election of the nation of Israel eventually narrows down to the election of the “remnant” and finally to the election of one person, the incarnate Jesus Christ. After his death and resurrection, Israel’s election is expanded to include not only Jews, but Gentiles as well, so that election now includes all of humanity (Jews and Gentiles) in the church. Similarly, the Levitical priesthood had a particular function within the nation of Israel, and that function was restricted not simply to males but to males of the tribe of Levi who were descendants of Aaron. Hebrews tells us that the Levitical priesthood is no more because Christ (who was not a Levite) is not only High Priest, but also the one sacrifice for sins, and again, Christ’s sacrifice is for everyone, Jews and Gentiles, and also both men and women. If Paul’s letter to the Galatians and the Letter to the Hebrews tell us anything, it is that these restrictions of the OT were for a limited historical period for a particular purpose, and simply do not apply anymore. To suggest that (after Christ’s resurrection), although the central reason for the limitations of the OT election of Israel and of the Levitical priesthood no longer apply, yet, for some reason, the restriction of a male ecclesial office does apply needs a different argument. Given what Galatians and Hebrews teach about the temporary nature of Israel’s election and of the Levitical priesthood, the burden of proof lies in the opposite direction. Logically, the restriction of ecclesial office to males should be no more relevant to a NT church that includes Gentiles than is the election of Israel as a nation or the restriction of priesthood to the descendants of Aaron.

Yes, I too look forward to further essays. I have had to put this project on hold temporarily because I am writing a book. Once I’ve finished the current chapter, I’m hoping have time to do some other writing.